Mitt Romney

In recent weeks, David Letterman has grown increasingly vocal about his desire to have Mitt Romney on his show before election day. Last month the host took to the airwaves to insist that he does not hate the Republican nominee , and that in fact he'd welcome Romney and his wife, Ann, on “The Late Show” anytime they'd like. Letterman has continued to ratchet up the pressure: Last week he half-jokingly told viewers not to vote for Romney until he visited the show, and on Tuesday night, the host even conducted a mock interview with “Mitt Romney” -- otherwise known as Jack Black - to prove just how pleasant a “Late Show” appearance would be. Black took to the stage dressed in a pair of high-waisted dad jeans and a pastel button-down - the unofficial presidential candidate version of leisure wear.

Gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari, who is trailing badly in the polls, said Sunday that former President George W. Bush, 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney and other Republican leaders are aiding his campaign. "A lot of people nationally have been helping," he told reporters after speaking to a Republican women's convention in Orange. "[Former Florida Gov.] Jeb Bush has been helping, [former Indiana Gov.] Mitch Daniels has given a lot of advice on economy policy. "President Bush has been very helpful and made calls and opened doors," Kashkari said.

Cleanup and confession were the dominant Olympic themes emanating from here Thursday as the Salt Lake Organizing Committee named a new president and an American member of the International Olympic Committee admitted giving a job to the son of an IOC member who resigned last month because of the bribery scandal.

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, taking a broadening role in efforts to help candidates of his party, on Wednesday endorsed former state legislator Tony Strickland, the Strickland campaign announced. The former state assemblyman and state senator is running in the June 3 primary for the Los Angeles-area seat being vacated by Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), who is retiring when his term expires. McKeon already has endorsed Strickland, one of several Republican candidates in the GOP-leaning 25th Congressional District.

Re "Romney assails Obama foreign policy," Oct. 9 It is absurd for Mitt Romney to criticize anyone in the area of foreign policy. Romney has called Russia our "No. 1 geopolitical foe" (as though the Cold War continues). He promised to brand China a currency manipulator and impose tariffs on Chinese goods on Day 1 of his administration (without mentioning Day 2, when China may well stop purchasing U.S. Treasury notes, thus sending interest rates soaring and our economic stability into tatters)

The budget that President Obama unveiled Monday is, at its heart, a political document, laying out his priorities and, not incidentally, reflecting the strategy he plans to pursue in his reelection bid. It underscores Obama's hopes of turning the election into a choice -- as he sees it -- between a vision based on economic fairness and broad opportunity and Republican proposals that would hurt the neediest and further reward the already well-to-do....

Mitt Romney's time at the 30-yard line of Detroit's Ford Field more closely resembled the recent 0-16 Lions than this year's playoff-qualifying vintage. That's how his speech Friday to the Detroit Economic Club is playing at least. What was supposed to be a major address playing to the presidential hopeful's strength -- the economy -- ended up being mocked in the Twitter-sphere and providing fodder to his foes. For starters there's the choice of venue -- a 65,000-seat football stadium for a speech that was only ever going to draw a few hundred people at most.

Aboard the Romney Plane - In recent days, Ann Romney has been a frequent visitor to the press cabin at the back of the new Romney campaign plane, in one instance bearing her famed Welsh cakes. Her husband? Not so much. So during the flight from Jacksonville, Fla., to Portsmouth, N.H., on Saturday night, the press rolled an orange to the Republican nominee at the front of the plane. Written on it was a question about his upcoming debate prep: Was he really planning to let Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio play the role of President Obama, given his aversion to mock debates during the primary?

Presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is again claiming credit for saving the U.S. automobile industry. On Monday the former Massachusetts governor visited a manufacturer of truck parts in Euclid, Ohio, where he was interviewed by a local television station. The reporter noted that the manufacturer, Stamco Industries, may owe its survival to the federal government's decision to throw lifelines to General Motors and Chrysler in early 2009. Romney responded by giving his own version of events: "My own view, by the way, was that the auto companies needed to go through bankruptcy before government help.

This post has been corrected as indicated below. You'd think a handsome guy like Mitt Romney would not have a problem with the ladies, but his poll numbers show something different. In the 12 swing states that will determine whether he goes to the White House as president or back to one of his many houses as a private citizen, Romney trails President Obama among female voters by a margin of 54% to 36%. Female voters have flocked to the president in the days since contraception popped up as an issue in the campaign.

Re "Rep. Ryan calls for cuts in anti-poverty programs," March 4 So Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) proposes to reduce college Pell grants and child-care and welfare assistance programs. Odd that I didn't see any proposal to tax at ordinary income rates the so-called carried-interest income of hedge fund managers, whose tax-favored earnings frequently run into seven and eight figures. If Ryan's "use your oars to push everyone else away from the life raft" mentality is the economic plan of the GOP, despite the downward economic pressure the middle and lower middle classes have experienced over the last 30 years, I can only hope that the foundering middle class will vote against those who are causing it. And if Republicans think they'll somehow get even with the "takers" by this approach, they might want to remember that eight of the 10 states with the highest percentage of people who paid no federal income taxes in 2010 were red states in 2012.

Get ready, L.A. -- the winter storms headed to Los Angeles this week could be the wettest in two years. The first storm, expected to hit Wednesday evening, could bring as much as a quarter of an inch of rain to Los Angeles County and leave by Thursday morning. A stronger second storm will arrive in time for the Friday afternoon commute and power through Saturday, dousing the coast and valleys with 1 to 2 inches of rain and as much as 4 inches in the mountains. “It's been … years” since this much rain has come to Los Angeles, said National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Sukup.

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney, who led the 2002 Winter Olympics in the United States, said Sunday that security threats in Sochi have not been overblown but that the Russians have shown they could keep the Games “reasonably safe.” “There's no such thing as a 100% guarantee, but I think at this stage people feel pretty comfortable that the Games will be safe,” he told NBC's “Meet the Press.” Romney, the president and CEO of the 2002 Winter...

Greg Whiteley's random access memories documentary, "Mitt," available on Netflix and being shown at a Pasadena theater, is a viewing experience both familiar and strange. As a private glimpse inside the swirl that began with the former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's 2008 primary run to be the Republican presidential nominee (losing to John McCain) and concluding with his 2012 status as an also-ran, "Mitt" feels like the kind of behind-the-scenes campaign doc that's eager to clue us in on how candidates function day in and day out. There's Romney in hotel suites hashing out strategy with his family while cracking jokes, tidying the room, playfully arguing, weathering setbacks and staying optimistic in the face of defeat.

Remember 2011-12, when the Republicans had a village of presidential candidates who went through what seemed like a basketball season's worth of debates and state contests before they finally settled on the guy they were going to settle on all along, Mitt Romney? Yeah. Some of us are still recovering. The Republican National Committee apparently learned a lesson from that, so it decided Friday to truncate the 2016 nominating schedule, with an eye toward holding the national convention in June or July instead of late August, as in the last cycle.

In election cycles past, losing presidential candidates have been content to fade into the background, avoiding interviews and sidestepping questions about pressing political matters. But that has not been the case with 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who seemed to pop up everywhere from “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” to “The Rachael Ray Show” last fall as he promoted his wife's cookbook , and resurfaced again this month as Netflix released a new documentary about his two presidential campaigns.

Besides fighting the charge that firing people is his favorite hobby, Mitt Romney must now battle the allegation that he wears “mom jeans.” Monday, Chris Matthews raised the issue on MSNBC's “Morning Joe,” during a group discussion of Romney's supposed lack of authenticity. Matthews went off on one of his blue-collar-guy-at-the-bar rants: “This guy with his - whadaya call 'em? - mom jeans or whatever he wears. What is that costume that he wears? What is that costume?

Reporting from Charleston, S.C. -- What did Mitt Romney do on the afternoon before the climactic debate that could determine whether he wins his party's nomination? He went shopping, of course. About 2 p.m. Thursday, I was strolling north past the posh shops on King Street when I recognized the burly man in the black suit who was walking briskly toward me. I'd seen him the night before alertly scanning the crowd as Romney pumped hands and posed with babies after a speech. In that split second of recognition, the security man passed by and I caught a glimpse of the guy behind him -- a man dressed casually in jeans, a checked shirt and windbreaker.

"Poverty is not some rare disease from which the rest of us are all immune," a leading American politician said last week. "It is but the worst strain of a widespread disease otherwise known as economic insecurity. Most families worry about making ends meet. " That must have been President Obama or some other Democrat, right? Wrong. It was Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), Mitt Romney's former running mate and the Republicans' chief budget-cutter on Capitol Hill. Up to now, his most famous statement about the social safety net was that it risked becoming "a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.

PARK CITY, Utah -- Mitt Romney may have a home in Park City, but he's not the kind of person you'd expect to attend a movie at the Sundance Film Festival, whose programming leans liberal, particularly among the documentaries. But the former presidential candidate dropped in to the first Sundance screening of “Mitt,” an unusually candid and largely flattering look at Romney shot over the course of his two presidential campaigns. Filmmaker Greg Whitely was given entree to Romney and his family, yet shut out from the campaign strategy meetings that are the staple of movies, books and articles about the political process.